ANATOLIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Peppermint
by Jesse Cook III
REVIEW
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”
Ernest Benn
Peppermint is a political drama that offers a critique of how politics works in the USA. Like all societies, American society also wants to leave itself in the hands of honest, virtuous, and reliable politicians. However, the preferences and voter prejudgments of the focus groups that can affect the political scene create a twisted order. How can a society decide on what is the right choice at a point where all politicians show or try to show themselves as honest, virtuous, and reliable people to voters?
Election campaigns try to cover up the things that are not desired to be known or heard in the personal lives of the candidates to positively affect voters. Professional teams, who try to show the candidates as honest and friendly people to the public, are ready to calculate everything for the salvation of their campaigns and find solutions for all situations. This is because the political scene created by the twisted order is also a world of advertising and marketing, where everything is emptied and used, bought, and sold. Many intrigues, lies, deceptions, and devious affairs are planned by these teams and maintained owing to them. This swamp has only one goal. They are reaching more power and more money! What is left for voters is to play Little Red Riding Hood. Peppermint tries to present a picture that reveals how desperate society is when it comes to choosing the right person for its own benefit. In addition to the horribleness of the nature of politics, the film also refers to racial discrimination, whose effects are still felt in today's American political atmosphere and which is the deep breaking point of the society.
We cannot claim that the film has a creative plot because it addresses one of the oldest problems in human history. The storyline progresses fast in terms of flow. Many intermediate links that the audience may be curious about are skipped. However, the film still has integrity, and it is possible to watch it with pleasure. It would have been better if the details that could be wondered had been presented at an appropriate time. Still, the film deserves attention since it describes a subject that is current and has universal validity.
AIFF